Abraham Lincoln, Volume II eBook

It was now obvious that the decisive conflict between
the two armies, which had so long been striving for
the advantage of strategic position, and fighting
in hostile competition, was at last to occur.
Each had its distinctive advantage. The Federals
were led by Grant, with Sherman, Thomas, Sheridan,
and Hooker as his lieutenants,—­a list which
may fairly recall Napoleon and his marshals.
On the other hand, the Southerners, lying secure in
intrenched positions upon the precipitous sides and
lofty summits of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge,
seemed invulnerably placed. It does not belong
to this narrative to describe the terrific contest
in which these two combatants furiously locked horns
on November 24 and 25. It was Hooker’s brave
soldiers who performed the conspicuous feat which
was conclusive of victory. Having, by command,
stormed the first line of rifle-pits on the ascent,
upon the Confederate left, they suddenly took the
control into their own hands; without orders they
dashed forward, clambered upward in a sudden and resistless
access of fighting fury, and in an hour, emerging above
the mists which shrouded the mid-mountain from the
anxious view of General Grant, they planted the stars
and stripes on top of Lookout Mountain. They
had fought and won what was poetically christened “the
battle above the clouds.” Sherman, with
seven divisions, had meanwhile been making desperate
and bloody assaults upon Missionary Ridge, and had
gained the first hilltop; but the next one seemed
impregnable. It was, however, not necessary for
him to renew the costly assault; for Hooker’s
victory, which was quickly followed by a handsome
advance by Sheridan, on Sherman’s right, so
turned the Confederate position as to make it untenable.

The Northerners were exasperated to find, among the
Confederate troops who surrendered as captives in
these two battles, prisoners of war taken at Vicksburg
and Port Hudson, who had been paroled and never exchanged.

On the eve of this battle Longstreet had started northward
to cut off and destroy Burnside in Knoxville, and
no sooner was the actual fighting over than Grant
sent Sherman in all haste to Burnside’s assistance.
Thereupon Longstreet fell back towards Virginia, and
came to a resting-place midway, where he afterward
lay unharmed and unharming for many months. Thus
at last the long-deferred wish of the President was
fulfilled, and the chief part of East Tennessee was
wrested from Confederate occupation. Among the
loyal inhabitants the great rejoicing was in proportion
to the sufferings which they had so long been undergoing.